Tradition recognizes 12 avatars devoted to Visnu who lived in the 6th and 9th century in the Tamil speaking region of South India.

Cover -- Contents -- Introduction -- PART I. THE PRESTIGE COMBAT FILM -- 1. Movies and Memorials -- 2. Soundtracks and Scores -- PART II. DIALOGUE -- 3. Soldiers' Talk -- 4. Soldiers' Song -- 5. Disembodied Voices -- PART III. SOUND EFFECTS -- 6. Nothing Sounds Like an M-16 -- 7. Helicopter Music -- PART IV. MUSIC -- 8. Unmetered -- 9. Metered -- 10. Elegies -- 11. End Titles -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

This is the first full-length study of the devotional poetry and poetics of the fourteenth-century poet-philosopher Vedantadesika, one of the most outstanding and influential figures in the Hindu tradition of Sri-Vaishnavism (the cult of Lord Vishnu). Despite their intrinsic beauty and theological importance, the poetry and philosophy of Vedantadesika have received very little scholarly attention. But for the millions who belong to the Vaishnava tradition, those poems are not just classical literature; they are committed to memory, recited, sung, and enacted in ritual both in India and throughout the Hindu diaspora. Steven Hopkins here offers a comparative study of the Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Tamil poems composed by Vedantadesika in praise of important Vaishnava shrines and their icons--poems that are considered to be the apogee of South Indian devotional literature.

"... a significant contribution to the field... great insight, learning, and clarity." -- George Hart III, University of California, Berkeley "A master's hand is behind this volume." -- Religious Studies Review "... eminently readable... artfully explains the initial spirit and modern understanding of Tamil bhakti poetry... " -- Pacific Affairs "Norman Cutler's major achievement in Songs of Experience is the new critical perspective he provides on bhakti poetry." -- The Journal of Religion Cutler reveals the link between Tamil poetry and religion. His fluent translations make the poems -- songs of the experience of God -- live for us as they did for their first audience nearly fifteen centuries ago.

Historians of the English congregational hymn, focusing on its literary or theological aspects, have usually found the genre out of step with the rationalist era that produced it. This book takes a more balanced approach to the work of four writers and concludes that only eighteenth-century Britain, with its understanding of public verse, common truth, and the utility of poetry, could have invented the English hymn as we know it. The early hymns sought to inspire, teach, stir, and entertain congregations. The essential purpose shifted slightly in line with each poet's setting and in accord with the poetic thought of his day. For Isaac Watts's Independents, powerful traditional imagery was appropriate. Charles Wesley's enthusiasm proceeded from and served the spirit of the revival. John Newton's prophetic vision particularly suited the impoverished community at Olney. William Cowper's masterful handling of formal conventions and his idiosyncratic personal hymns reflect his poetic, rather than clerical, vocation. Despite such temporal variations, the great poetry by each man displays themes of general Christian relevance, suggesting common experience, showing normative features of the genre, and bearing a complex and intriguing relationship to secular literature.

How is it that this woman's breasts glimmer so clearly through her saree? Can't you guess, my friends? What are they but rays from the crescents left by the nails of her lover pressing her in his passion, rays now luminous as the moonlight of a summer night? These South Indian devotional poems show the dramatic use of erotic language to express a religious vision. Written by men during the fifteenth to eighteenth century, the poems adopt a female voice, the voice of a courtesan addressing her customer. That customer, it turns out, is the deity, whom the courtesan teases for his infidelities and cajoles into paying her more money. Brazen, autonomous, fully at home in her body, she merges her worldly knowledge with the deity's transcendent power in the act of making love. This volume is the first substantial collection in English of these Telugu writings, which are still part of the standard repertoire of songs used by classical South Indian dancers. A foreword provides context for the poems, investigating their religious, cultural, and historical significance. Explored, too, are the attempts to contain their explicit eroticism by various apologetic and rationalizing devices. The translators, who are poets as well as highly respected scholars, render the poems with intelligence and tenderness. Unusual for their combination of overt eroticism and devotion to God, these poems are a delight to read.